Dipnetting

This new monitoring initiative has just started at work, and I'm basically running it. We're taking water samples from the public beach and sending them up to a lab in Anchorage to be tested for pathogens like fecal coliforms (delicious I know). This was the first week, and it was the biggest pain in the ass...hopefully all the problems that arose with the coordination of collecting and shipping the samples were only related to being the first run, because I have to do this for 7 more weeks.

Other than the beach project taking up far more time than it really should, life is good. The weather had been absolute shit all week...actually, we really haven't seen the sun since before the 4th of July. That in itself was really getting to me, but then Wednesday and Thursday, it just POURED. We were in the field Thursday and while the water doesn't really bother me (I mean, we're in streams, we're wearing clothes that can get wet) I really dislike how everything starts to smell like wet dog. We don't even have a dog.

Fortunately, Thursday evening the weather FINALLY cleared, and we saw the sun. Its absolutely amazing how much you can miss the sun. And how much a little bit of sun can totally change your mood. On our way back to Homer from the field site (we had driving 3 hours north of us for this one..), my boss and I met up with her significant other, his mom (who was visiting from "outside" aka the lower 48), and his buddies from work (he's a fish biologist for AK Fish and Game) on the Kasilof River (which is about 60 miles north of Homer). The word on the street was that the Reds were running. Aka, red salmon were swimming up river to spawn. So my boss etc wanted to go dipnetting.

Dipnetting is this form of fishing where you stick this HUGE net into the river and basically water for fish to swim into it. If you get to the river at the right time, you can catch 35 fish in one day by this method. The run wasn't quite as strong when we got there, but it was still decent. In about 3 hours, my boss came home with 9 fish. Thats a nice stash of fish they'll be able to eat for quite some time (of course, freezing most of it). Dipnetting is only legal for Alaskan residents (related the the idea of subsistence, which I will talk about in more detail in a future post) so I couldn't participate, but it was still fun to hang out on the beach and watch all the goings on. The knowledge that salmon are running in a particular river really does travel fast...people call up their friends when the runs are strong and everyone leaves work early to catch their fish. On the beach, there are rows and rows of tents and RVs. Its a pretty festive sight, actually.

Anyways, long story short, a yucky wet field day turned into a pretty nice evening. The sky was clear, you could see all the snowy mountains across the inlet, the seine boats were driving in for the evening and the sun was setting on the water.